* The federal government has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the widow and children of the first person killed in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001 … How much of that is “hush money” to keep from the American people documents the FBI doesn’t want us to see?

Posted by Lew Weinstein on November 30, 2011

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Robert Stevens ... the first anthrax victim died in 2001

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Scott Shane writes in the NYT (11/29/11) …

The federal government has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the widow and children of the first person killed in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, settling a lawsuit claiming that the Army did not adequately secure its supply of the deadly pathogen.

As part of the agreement, Justice Department lawyers are seeking

to have many documents that were uncovered in the litigation

kept under court seal or destroyed.

A Justice Department spokesman, Charles S. Miller, said he could not comment on why the government was trying to preserve the secrecy of documents beyond what was already in the public court file.

In a July filing in the civil case, Justice Department lawyers said Dr. Ivins “did not have the specialized equipment” in his lab to make the dry anthrax powder in the letters — appearing to contradict the department’s claims in the criminal case. Days later, the lawyers retracted the statement.

LMW COMMENT …

How much of the $2.5 million settlement is “hush money” to keep from the American people documents they have every right to see?

What really happened in the anthrax attack and the subsequent investigation that is so sensitive it cannot be known?

Readers of this blog know I have been furious about the FBI’s behavior ever since watching the August 2008 press conference where they asserted, with no physical evidence, no witnesses, and (it turns out) no science, that Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the anthrax attacks.

It was clear to me then that the FBI had not proven that Ivins was involved, let alone that he was the sole perpetrator.

Does the FBI have more evidence against Dr. Ivins they won’t show us?

Or have they not solved the case at all?

Or do they know who the perpetrators were (not Ivins) but for some reason won’t say?

Being a novelist, I wrote a novel, presenting what I (and others, including a respected representative of the U.S. Intelligence Community) thought was a plausible scenario of what might have happened. My novel CASE CLOSED has been published and is available in paperback and kindle formats on amazon.